Michael Clarke Duncan dead at 54

Sorry to bum you guys out on your holiday, but Michael Clarke Duncan has died. He was as far as I’ve ever heard a super nice guy and always seemed pretty healthy, which makes this kind of scary as well as sad.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Michael Clarke Duncan’s fiancee says the Oscar nominee for The Green Mile has died while being hospitalized following a July heart attack.

Publicist Joy Fehily released a statement from Clarke’s fiancée, the Rev. Omarosa Manigault[Wait, she’s a reverend now?-Ed], saying the 54-year-old actor died Monday morning in a Los Angeles hospital after nearly two months of treatment following the July 13 heart attack.

The 6-foot-5, 300-pound Duncan appeared in dozens of films, including such box office hits as Armageddon, Planet of the Apes and Kung Fu Panda. [USAToday]

He was also great in Slammin’ Salmon, which makes me wish he’d gotten to do more comedy. This sucks. At the very least he could’ve done us the courtesy of getting fat or becoming a comedian before he died so we could’ve prepared ourselves for this a little better. It should also be noted that the guy managed to get engaged to a fairly-infamous reality TV villain without anyone even knowing about it until he died, which is as good of proof as any that he wasn’t some obnoxious, fame-whoring piece of sh*t like half the other people in LA. Bummer.

Tough loss. Can’t remember anything I ever saw him in that wasn’t improved by his presence, from the B-movie garbage to stuff like Green Mile.

I always thought it was cool of him to suit up and do the DirecTV commercial as his character from Planet of the Apes. He had to have known it was critically savaged and generally scoffed at, but you get the idea he had such fun doing it that he relished the opportunity to do it again. And really, he did a hell of a job in a role that could have been a HUGE joke. So “BOW YOUR HEADS!”

I met him back in 2009 at the Gracie Academy in Torrance, CA. He was fully naked just with a towel sitting on the bench in the locker room area and I walked in and saw him. I was like, OMG IT’S MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN NO WAY!! But all I said to him was, “Hi,” and he was like so fucking cool about it like he wasn’t this movie star that I watched in movies my whole life. RIP Michael Clarke Duncan.